Kongsberg officials said the decisions were a result of the "global automotive market collapse" that has resulted in a steep drop in demand for automotive components especially in North America.

Kongsberg officials have said a lot, most of it is a bunch of hogswallow.

The Businessweek piece goes on to say:

Kongsberg said its Van Wert, Ohio facility will close sometime in the summer and its production will be transferred to the company's Nuevo Laredo, Mexico facility, eliminating about 105 jobs.

The company said it also plans to move its Haysville, Kan. facility's production to its facility in Matamoros, Mexico. The Haysville facility will also close sometime in the summer, affecting about 100 jobs, Kongsberg said.

Not a problem. When Kongsberg decideds that Mexico is too expensive, they'll move to Poland, Haiti, India, maybe back to the US, you know where ever the taxes are cheap and the workers are so desperate they'd crawl all over themselves to get the jobs. Cause in the end, they're really just greedy bastards.

And why do I call them greedy bastards, well, because while they talk about the poor auto market from one side of their mouth, they accept a huge German contract out of the other side.

Kongsberg Automotive has booked an order valued at MEUR 18 (MNOK 151). The new business includes delivery of Seat Heat to the European market. The contract term is 7 years with production start in 2010.

The seat heaters will be manufactured at Kongsberg Automotive's plant in Pruszkow, Poland.

The customer is a German automaker and one of the world's premier manufacturers of passenger cars.

Ah, yes, Poland. This is the operation begun by closures of Amotfors, Sweden. But don't take my word for it, here's what Kongsberg had to say:

Kongsberg, 8 December 2008.

Kongsberg Automotive (KA) has booked an order valued at MEUR 4,3 (40
MNOK). The new business includes delivery of Seat Heat to the Russian
market, where a German automaker is preparing the launch of a small
sized car.

"The customer is one of Europe's leading carmakers and this contract
represents a door-opener to the emerging Russian automotive market",
says Hans Peter Havdal, President of Automotive Systems at KA.
"Further, this contract is the first ever to this particular
carmaker, and we expect new business opportunities to follow as a
result of this award", he concludes.


###

Kongsberg Automotive is headquartered in Kongsberg, Norway and has
more than 50 facilities in 20 countries on all continents. Kongsberg
Automotive, with revenues of about EUR1 billion and over 9.500
employees, provides system solutions to vehicle makers around the
world. The product portfolio includes gearshift systems, cables for a
wide variety of applications, fuel lines, tubing and hoses,
couplings, clutch actuation, stabilizing rods, seat heaters, seat
ventilation, lumbar supports, head restrains, arm rests, steering
columns, pedals, electronics and displays. Find more information at
www.kongsbergautomotive.com.

Yeah, right, market is down, so we have to close Van Wert (despite an illegal lockout) and we will have to close operations in Kanasas (another 100 jobs) because we have to move those operations into Mexico. It's just business, after all. Just business. Greedy fucking bastards.

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Somehow, I missed this news of TWO more plant closures in the US care of Kongsberg Automotive and their Greed:

Kongsberg, Norway, April 18, 2008 - Kongsberg Automotive, a global supplier of automotive, commercial and industrial products, today announced that they are restructuring their Interior Systems operations in North America.

Production at their Westland, Michigan facility will be transferred to an existing plant in Mexico.

The Westland facility today produces lumbar support assemblies for the automotive market. This production will be transferred to the Kongsberg Automotive facility in Reynosa, Mexico. The Westland facility is expected to close in the autumn of 2008.

Another restructuring project is to transfer the current production of Interior Systems parts from Willis Texas to the Kongsberg Automotive plant in Matamoros Mexico. This is also scheduled to be completed during 2008.

All together 120 people are affected by this transfer. The Willis plant will however continue manufacturing of other products within the Kongsberg Automotive portfolio.

"This restructuring will better align us to market needs and improve our overall competitiveness" said Olav Volldal, CEO Kongsberg Automotive Holding ASA. "Our recent acquisition of Teleflex's GMS Division has created a need for facility consolidations and we are pursuing a low cost footprint in North America."

That last paragraph is the same crap they've been selling for years now in their Scandanavian plant closures so they can move production to new facilities in Poland, despite the move COSTING the company MILLIONS.

I know, they're looking at LONG TERM issues, and losing on short term instead. Whatever. In the end, it's still all about greed. If it weren't, they wouldn't be bussing in SCABS in Van Wert Ohio.

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Okay, the headline is really just my opinion, but then again, this posting is actually based on opinion. The opinion of the editor of the Van Wert Independant:

Kongsberg: It's what they don't say
Once again, a contingent of top Kongsberg Automotive officials have come to Van Wert to try and make their blue-collar workers look like the bad guys in their labor dispute.

Like Peter Spencer a few months ago, Kongsberg group vice president Jarle Nymoen met Thursday with a local news medium to let the community know how hard company officials are trying to keep the local plant here in Van Wert. Their words nearly brought tears to my eyes. Well, almost. Actually, I think they were tears of laughter.

When you strip the rhetoric out, Nymoen basically said there is a bright future for the company’s shift towers here in Van Wert if it wasn’t for those greedy union workers who demand a wage they can live on.

While workers in Mexico and China may be able to live on $9 an hour, one very much doubts that Norwegian workers back in Kongsberg could even pay to put gasoline in their cars on that wage.

In addition to trying to put public pressure on local Kongsberg union workers to settle for an unlivable wage, Nymoen and attorney Todd Dawson of Baker & Hostetler, who sent a letter to local news media earlier in the week, are trying to make union officials look bad for “lying” that Kongsberg is unwilling to meet and negotiate with them.

Actually, I think the meaning of the word “negotiate” is what Kongsberg and union officials seem to disagree on the most. While Dawson asserted that United Steelworkers District 1 President Dave McCall was wrong when he said company officials weren’t willing to meet for negotiations, what McCall actually said was: “We stand ready and prepared to go back to the table and bargain for a fair and just contract.”

Dawson’s own letter included the company’s idea of negotiations when he said that, while the company was willing to sit down and talk, it was committed to its final offer made prior to the lockout.

Does that sound like someone willing to sit down and talk about a “fair and just contract”? It's like someone saying they're willing to talk, as long as they don't have to say anything.

In addition, the word “negotiation,” as defined by the New Oxford American Dictionary, is “discussion aimed at reaching an agreement.” If 303 out of 312 people voting on a contract turn it down, it seems highly unlikely that an agreement will be forthcoming without some change in what's being discussed. One would even think it disingenuous of Kongsberg officials to feel such an agreement was even possible.

When I look at statements made by Nymoen and Dawson, I also read the subtext: In effect, what they really mean, but don't actually say.

First, Dawson says the temporary workers are just that and won’t get permanent jobs. However, Nymoen says the company feels there are American workers who will work for the wages it wants to pay (9 bucks an hour) and notes that the temp workers have basically shown the company was right by doing just that. Does that sound like they want their union workers back?

Nymoen, always the reasonable guy, then says he is in Van Wert to listen. Of course, the only people he has listened to so far are management people, but he says he would like to hear the union’s side as well. Makes you wonder why, though, if he was so eager to hear from guys like USW Local 1-524 President Aaron Collins, he didn’t set up a meeting beforehand so they could sit down right off. I guess local Kongsberg management officials don’t know where Collins could be located. If he wasn’t locked out, he probably would have been at the plant. Go figure.

There’s also what I think is a veiled threat in the Nymoen statements. Nymoen states that, failing to attempt to work through a contract with union workers would have meant, and I quote: “the plant would have been shut down by the spring of 2009.” Makes me think that was the plan all along, but I’m probably just cynical.

I WILL agree with Mr. Nymoen’s unspoken inference that someone is being greedy here. However, it isn’t union workers trying to earn enough to pay their bills who are greedy, but company officials who want blue-collar workers to shoulder ALL the costs of becoming competitive, while they continue to rake in mounds of cash for socking it to them.

The main unanswered question in this whole Kongsberg mess is this: If the company is not competitive, what sacrifices are its white-collar workers and top executives making to improve that? The unspoken answer to that is “finding cheaper blue-collar workers.”

If that were NOT the answer, we in the media would certainly have been bombarded with information on white-collar wage cuts and downsizing. After all, those actions make the company look good when negotiating with the union.

When you’re taking cuts as well, you can say this to the union: “Why are you unwilling to take a wage cut when we’re making financial sacrifices ourselves to make this company more competitive?”

Has anybody heard Kongsberg officials say anything like that? I haven’t.

Of course, if you do say that, you then have to prove your sacrifices are as great as those you’re asking of the union, but that would likely be the case, wouldn’t it, if becoming competitive were a team effort?

Moreover, Kongsberg knew what the financial situation was when they bought the local Teleflex plant. Apparently, Teleflex was doing all right with the plant. If Kongsberg can't run the plant at a profit, maybe they need to sell it to someone who can.

I don’t know about my fellow community members, but I, for one, am sick of a company that thinks it can operate like the “union-busting” companies of the 1930s that hired scabs to replace union workers, goons to enforce their will on those locked out, and threats to force them to comply. Sound familiar?

Unlike most members of the Van Wert community, Kongsberg officials obviously only see their union workers as obstacles to their own greed, rather than as neighbors and friends just trying to make a living.

How very sad.

--Dave Mosier

You can show Dave some love at his e-mail address: editor@vwindependent.com I think his analysis of Kongsberg Automotive's greed is dead on. And what's more, the greed aspect sure reminds me a lot of what's been happening on WallStreet. At what point do American workers stand up and say enough already? I know how we can, by putting pressure on Kongsberg Automotive to acutally bargain in good faith AND run a profitable operation in Van Wert without trying to run a greedy one. I suppose, that's too much to ask for from Kongsberg Automotive. I know, wait a day, they'll announce the plant closure and its subsequent move to Poland. See President Buch, I didn't forget Poland.

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That's what United Steelworkers were told in Van Wert Ohio nearly 5 weeks ago. Give it up or the company would lock them out.

So, guess what happened?

Yep, they locked them out.

A local Van Wert blogger summed it up last week:

A lot of why American companies can’t compete on a global market is because of lazy incompetent company managers from CEO on down. It’s pretty brainless to simply market your product via production by sweat shop laborers. From a market standpoint people will always prefer quality to quantity. I am using China as an example but there are many more foreign companies buying up top of the line U.S. companies that run them into the ground. Look at the stuff we buy in stores today and compare it to stuff we bought 20-30 years ago. From a quality standpoint its probably 50% less then it was back when we bought from our neighbors. Remember the day? I sure do!

It's a pretty good summary, but try this one on for size :

Peter Spencer, the Group Executive and President of the Kongsberg Driveline Systems, sat inside the offices and calmly discussed the labor situation between United Steel Worker employees and Kongsberg Automotive. In a nutshell, he explained the current situation is a confluence of the global economy and the woes of the automotive industry. United States manufacturers are no longer bidding against other United States manufacturers. They are in competition with suppliers from all over the world.

"We're in a situation here with our driveline section, my intention is to make this business profitable and sustainable," Spencer said. "From the business point of view, we're going to stay on the right side of the ethical line and the legal line. That's our commitment to all of our employees and I think that we take that very seriously.

"However, we are where we are and, as of today, we've got a very large opportunity on the table from a global customer, $30 million as it happens, but I need to quote them and the bottom line is the customer has told me very simply that if you quote this at fifteen bucks an hour, you haven't got it. If you quote this at $9 an hour, you've got a good chance."

Hey, but don't worry, Spencer has all the answers:

"So there is only one outcome to this and that's closure (without the wage concessions)," he said. "You have to ask if you want a factory here for the next 12 months or the next ten years."

Yum, did you catch that? Oh,wait, I hadn't told you yet, this is Kongsberg's history , closing plants. And wait, closing profitable plants, like the Amotfors seat heating system plant in Sweden.

The reorganisation reflects persistent margin pressure in the European automotive industry, Kongsberg Automotive said.

"We are one of the world's leading suppliers of seat heating systems for cars. To maintain this position we must adapt our production costs to a level which yield acceptable earnings also in future," said Olav Volldal, CEO of Kongsberg Automotive.

"The potential closure is not because our employees have not performed. It is due to the significant cost gap between high cost and low cost countries," Volldal added.

Sweet, huh?

So, that had me thinking. They were willing to close a profitable plant on the hopes that they'll be even more profitable when they pay lower wages and move out of high environmental standard Sweden and into low environmental standard Polland. But best of all is probably the line form their Fourth Quarter 2005 annual report where they noted:

The Group is reporting a tax cost percentage of 26 % in 2005. The tax cost is around 28 % for all the countries where Kongsberg Automotive operates, except for Poland where the tax rate is 19 % and the USA where the tax rate is around 33 %. There are no taxes payable for the Norwegian operations due to significant tax loss carryforward related to the Raufoss acquisition.

Do you see the tax base numbers? 33% for the US and 19% when they do business in Poland. So, how long will it be before they move the Van Wert Teleflex operations to Poland?

Sure seems as if this is their kind of business model...acquire patent technologies and then burn the communities where these items are made as they move to less taxing, less environmental standard countries. I really doubt this lock out has anything to do with the workers and everything to do with the way Kongsberg sees the US, as 33% tax. Looks as if they just want to lower the tax rate, costs for doing business and of course labor costs to that of Poland. Come on Poland, what happened to Solidarity?

Nothing more has changed in the lock out since I wrote on it just last week. Well, one thing has changed,

Locked out Kongsberg Automotive workers wait in a hallway at Trinity Friends Church for the opportunity to shop at the church's food pantry. Carolyn Garwood of Trinity Friends reported that the pantry was opened to the workers for three hours Friday morning and that 90 families were helped through the effort.

The thing that's changed is these families are now finding that their community supports them. No one outside of Van Wert Ohio seems to be talking about this Norwegian company and their desire to close plants to "pass the savings on to their customers". I wonder how much Spencer and Volldal are spending on groceries right now. Somehow, I think it's more than what their employees are. Seems like the Van Wert local blogger called it...this is what's wrong with our country and after 8 years of this, it's time we say to hell with this bullshit.

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Last night, the Van Wert city council met and the mayor decided to make a statement about the Lock Out. From the Times Bulletin:

Van Wert Mayor Louie Ehmer took an opportunity to clarify the city's neutral position in the matter, saying, "I would just like to point out that Clair Dudgeon, Nancy Bowen and myself made a visit to Kongsberg Automotive. We were out there just to convey that we want the plant to remain in Van Wert, and we wanted to maintain open communication during this time... We also made a conference call to the governor's office, and they also stressed the importance of keeping the plant here in Ohio. Our purpose was to show the importance of keeping the facility in Van Wert and that the city and the county are concerned about the outcome for the company and the people they employ.. "

When questioned further about the administration's role, Ehmer emphasized, "We do not want to get involved in the negotiations... Whatever we can do to keep the lines of communication open, that's all we can do, to help the company as well as the workers."

The company locked out the employees. I’m not really clear on why the Mayor would want to stay neutral. These are, after all, neighbors and friends, aren’t they? Well, I didn’t have to wait long, there is support in local government. Again from the Times Bulletin:

City Law Director Greg Unterbrink offered words of praise for the locked out workers. "If [the lockout] is prolonged, there will be the chance of provocation, but I can tell you from sitting in on some union meetings, their union rep is telling them it's a lockout and they aren't supposed to do anything to provoke either side," reported Unterbrink.

However, he did not share the same opinion of Kongsberg management. "But I can't say the same for management," he stated. "I feel that companies in Van Wert should be good corporate citizens."

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